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Message: <blockquote data-quote="spyscribe" data-source="post: 2489710" data-attributes="member: 5808">Part the One-Hundred Forty-SeventhIn which: not all dangers of the desert will kill you… like that.At Baasim’s shout, dark figures come running out of the darkness and into the camp from all directions.  Baasim himself runs straight for Thatch, striking out with his whip.  The lash wraps around Thatch’s arm and Baasim pulls back hard, wrenching Thatch’s shoulder painfully and jerking him nearly off his feet.Keeping watch from behind the scant shelter of her tent, Lira watches as one of the figures runs towards her… closer… closer… and then he stops, still nearly ten feet away.  Fine with me, she thinks, makes it harder for you to stop me from—And then he brings around the object Lira had glimpsed in the darkness, and she sees that it is most emphatically not a javelin.It’s a pole, nearly six feet long, topped by a pair of hooked jaws complete with metal teeth. And before Lira can do anything about it, those jaws are closed and locked around her throat.Reflexively, she grabs at the metal digging into her flesh, but the jaws are locked fast.  Although Lira tries to keep her feet, the man at the other end of the pole has too much leverage.  He jerks her up by the neck and the next thing Lira knows she is crashing into the ground, pinned down by her neck.Eva, Reyu and Thatch are soon similarly dispatched, all struggling mightily, but unable to strike back at their attackers.Lira closes her eyes and tries to concentrate.  Yes, this is not good.  Her neck hurts and she’s afraid to take her hands away from their death-grip on the hinge of the jaws that have her trapped because it’s the only thing that gives her any cushion at all.  But she doesn’t need her hands to cast, and he hasn’t quite choked off her airway.  Lira opens her eyes again, looks straight at the man at the other end of the pole, and casts the first stilled magic missile of her life.The blue bolts hit him in the face with very satisfying force.Annika, still free, casts acid arrow at one of the attackers not yet engaged with anyone else.  He retaliates, firing a blowgun and hitting Annika with a dart just above her collarbone.  For a moment, Annika feels a wave of dizziness, but she steels herself, and it passes. Reyu does not even try to break out of the mechanical jaws locked around her neck.  Instead, she turns her efforts inward, wildshaping into a viper.  Once changed, she easily slips free of the man-catcher’s grip and begins slithering up the pole towards her attacker.Who promptly drops the pole in a dead panic.Back at the center of camp, another set of bolas come flying out of the dark, this time catching Kiara and sending her toppling to the ground, hopelessly tangled.  Seeing that his men appear to be winning, Baasim calls out again.  “This could have been very easy, Justicar!  Something in your drink and you never would have known!  You will all fetch an excellent price at the slave pens at Atentchet!”  Anvil glowers, and turning to face the Baasim he calls upon the powers of Kettenek to strike the other man blind.There is a flash of light around his eyes and Baasim lets out a yell of pure rage as his pupils suddenly shrink and disappear.  He flounders for a moment, finally shouting, “Kill the Justicar!”  before turning away… and running straight into a camel.  The camel looks down at him, nonplussed, and spits.The slaver sent to capture Djamel was unsuccessful in his attempt to catch him with his device, but seeing that lethal force now seems to be on the table, he comes charging forward, swinging his scimitar.  He gets in one good strike before Djamel unleashes a flurry of blows that send his attacker reeling back, trying to get out of range.The battle is short, but brutal.Reyu the viper reaches the slaver who had captured her faster than he can get away and sinks her poison fangs into the tender flesh of his neck.  From the darkness, more assailants continue to pepper the party with poison darts.  Annika takes hits from three before finally sinking unconscious to the ground.The man holding Lira attempts to wrench her neck in an effort to stop her from casting again, but Euro comes running up the pole towards his face, chattering wildly.  He curses and Lira yells back at him, finishes the last words of her incantation and nailing him with another set of magic missiles.  He drops.Meanwhile, Eva manages to extract one of her daggers which she keeps near at hand, even in the middle of the night.  She pushes back to her feet and sends the blade flying through the air towards her attacker.  It hits and embeds deep in the slaver’s thigh.  He tries to strike back at her with his sword, but Eva twists at the last second, bringing the pole attached to her neck into his blade instead.The attackers soon give up on non-lethal means altogether.  Pulling out scimitars, they close in for the kill.  Of course, the party members are not without surprises of their own.  One slaver takes a swipe at Kiara only to find her suddenly morphing before his eyes.  The stroke goes wide as he gawks at the girl with wings, who flies straight up into the night sky and then sends an arrow streaking into his chest.Meanwhile, Baasim still gropes, blindly, trying to find his way out of the small herd of camels where he has become lost.  He finds Bob, who kicks him for his trouble.  Baasim is practically frothing with rage.Eva digs out another dagger and hurls it at the slaver trying to hack her to pieces.  She strikes true and he falls to his knees in the sand.  As his grip goes slack she wrenches the man-catcher from around her neck and pausing only to grab her rapier, closes in to finish him off.Reyu the viper bites her attacker again and he runs, screaming, off into the night.Lira, now free, sounds Sheesak’s horn.  Soon, the familiar silvery vortex is forming, however, Lira’s attention is abruptly diverted by the scimitar blade slicing down her arm.  She takes a step back and prepares to cast when the grey wolf that has just formed leaps forward, jaws open and snarling.Around this time, those of Baasim’s men who are still standing begin to sense that perhaps this fight is not going the way that they intended.Djamel sunders the man-catcher at his neck.  Another slaver who has been keeping Thatch frustratingly pinned for most of the fight is finally finished off through the combined efforts of Anvil and Bob.  Lira sends another set of magic missiles flying and the rest of the slavers turn to make a disorderly retreat.The party had made camp on the leeward side of a large sand dune and several of Baasim’s men attempt to flee over its crest.  Kiara rises high in the air, firing arrows after them while Djamel, Eva, and Bob storm in pursuit.Anvil very deliberately puts himself in Baasim’s way, and sure enough, a few seconds later, Baasim walks right into him. “Justicar!  Oh, thank goodness you are all right!  There are thieves and slavers about.  I tried to warn you…”Anvil snaps his set of masterwork manacles around the other man’s wrists and locks them with a satisfying >click<.</blockquote>

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